David Mason

“ Nobody would be really interested in such a thing except himself, and he was no writer. But it looked as if he might have found a real hobby, Don told himself. Why, he didn't even miss television.
The thought of television reminded him of the money, and the questions. The air and an occasional swim, and the food, had all combined to give him a feeling of health and relaxation. He felt supremely confident; he knew he could cope with the questions. And the time must be growing short. The plane should be arriving any day. ”

“ I was trying to think just how you'd describe Serco and its peculiar people. "Only different."
"How're they different?"
Looking at that stubborn mug of his, I knew I wasn't going to be able to explain this in a million years. It was just no use. Garrity had everything all figured out. But I took one try.
"They've never been much of a mechanical culture; they buy all their stuff from outside, in exchange for ore and timber. But they're one of the oldest civilizations in the Galaxy. They've spent a million years learning about minds and thoughts, all that philosophy sort of thing. ”

“ They didn't think their lives weren't pleasant enough. After all, look at their situation. They've got plenty to eat, without working hard for it, plenty of time on their hands—why shouldn't they keep down their surplus population? They don't know any other way, except breaking up their eggs, and they only do that to enemy tribes.
While he was at it, Duncan tried to tell them all about love and things like that. Oh, no, not sex. If there's anything a Tarchik doesn't know about that, there's no Earthman going to teach him. ”

“ Lonigan paused, to get the effect.
"Of course," he continued, "There isn't anyone else on the island. Nobody at all! And no radio, no newspapers, no way at all to hear from the outside world. Yes sir, Don, you'll be a real Robinson Crusoe. But just think, for two months, you'll get paid your regular salary; we're taking care of that. You can read, fish, think, maybe even write a book if you feel like it. Ever think about writing a book, Don?" ”

“ He climbed down and solemnly shook hands with Lenner.
"Fine machine you've got there, my boy. It'll take you back to your own place quite easily now. There wasn't a thing wrong except the drift crotch. However, I wouldn't use it again if I were you. There's no real control on these things. A man could end up anywhere. And of course, you'd never find your way back here, without control."
"Well, thanks..." Lenner said doubtfully. He glanced around. "It's a shame there's no way we could regularly communicate between our worlds. There's a lot we could do for this one." ”

“ Grady turned, and walked slowly, with a stiff back, down the path away from the Chief's house. To run, or to show fear, would be fatal; the Kya were themselves in a state of shock at the thing which had happened, and it would be an hour or more before they began to prepare for what they had to do. Therefore, Grady held his spine straight, feeling a cold spot between his shoulderblades where the first iron-headed arrow might strike in. ”

“ At first, for a few days, Don Gerson found himself moving in a pattern which resembled his normal life very closely. He awoke at seven; in fact, on the first morning, he found himself compelled to rise at once and dress. That first morning, he had an odd, lost feeling; there was no office to go to, no schedule of work to follow, no fixed orbit.
He began the first day by shaving and cooking himself what, for him, was a large breakfast. He thought about going for a swim, but remembered the rule he had been given once, about not swimming for two hours after eating. ”

“ I mean the way they treat their women. A Tarchik woman's nothing but a piece of property as far as sex goes, but there's some kind of curious maternal inheritance thing—anyway, it's as funny as hell to see a big Tarchik buck get down and bump his head in front of his mother, and his aunts, and all his other female ancestors. That's the one thing he's really afraid of. But, till she gets to be a mother, a woman leads a fairly rough life, getting passed around as a kind of prize of war, working harder than the men, all that.
So Duncan wanted them to be a bit chivalrous to their women. ”

“ But there are also worlds which are dead and shrunken cinders where there had been green planets and thriving races of people who could not give up war. For your sake I hope that you will be able to change your path, but I think that you do not have the ability, and that at last you will reach the end of the path you are on, and destroy each other and perhaps your world also. Each nova that you see in the sky marks the suicide of a race. Our knowledge of these matters is certain: there is never a nova caused simply by accident ”

“ The repairman bent closer, staring at the picture. It was now showing a busty young woman singer, her mouth opened, but silent, since the sound was turned down. She was slowly rotating as Rapp and the bearded repairman watched, turning until her face, still mouthing silent song, hung upside down on the screen.
"It always does that," Rapp said. "No matter which way I put the set, the picture's always upside down."
"No, man," the repairman said, pleadingly. "Look, I took a course. I mean, the best school, you dig? It don't work that way. It just can't." ”

“ You can't just stop a robot control device. Not till it's good and ready."
"But the people in it," she said. "They'd starve, or something...."
The car called the Traveler, rolling at the stately thirty miles an hour it always held, was coming down the road now, and the two men stood, watching. The woman, a little behind them, watched too, her face growing whiter. No one said anything as the old fashioned car rolled by, straight and steady down the highway, holding the center of the lane as sharply as it always did. ”

“ Doctor Randall said, from far down in his comfortable chair. "No such thing as time travel."
"You underestimate the Physics department," Pangborn told us coldly. "In spite of heavy losses to our staff—last year's treason trials cost us three of our most brilliant young men—we've made some very remarkable strides. We have what is crudely termed a time machine—although the correct term is temporal transducer. In fact we are currently conducting some very interesting researches with it."
"Then you have tried the killing of a grandfather, Herr Doctor?" Von Juntz inquired. ”

“ I've heard wild ideas in messrooms before, particularly halfway through a long trip. They usually fade out when a man gets his feet down on gravity again. This one didn't.
But it might have worked out, at that. It was just Garrity's luck that he signed on the Brooklyn.
The Brooklyn carried ore from Serco to Terra, and Terran machinery back to Serco, a regular, steady run. When I bumped into Garrity in the hiring hall, he told me he'd just signed on her, and I told him I had, too. Naturally, I asked him how the Garrity old-age-insurance system was working out. ”

“ But Duncan was always ready to forgive a Tarchik anything. That used to upset the hell out of them, too, because they expect to be punished when they're caught at anything. They don't understand our reluctance to kill, but they respect a Patrolman's shock gun, and when they get caught stealing or taking each other's tails they know they're going to get a few months in quod, or what they hate much worse, a public flogging. ”

“ For myself, it doesn't matter any more." He assumed a nobly tragic expression. "But you are young; you've got your life ahead of you; your State and your society need you. I'm glad to help you on your way."
Lenner mounted the machine, and Burwell beamed a thought at Corrigan.
"I've convinced him that the thing works, and that it would not be easy to come back. Actually, that machine of his is a real work of art. It doesn't do a damn thing. This boy comes from a place where they have to have a mechanical crutch for everything. ”

“ Don't worry, though. I got the touch, like with poetry. Same thing, in fact. All magic spells rhyme, see? Well, I used to rhyme, back before I really started swinging. Anybody can rhyme. And the rest is just instinct. ”

“ Anla said. "You have broken the ghost-cloak of the Chief, and your name cannot be Shassa. From this place and this time I take back your name, Shassa, and you have no name."
Grady did not say anything, because a Kya cannot hear the words of a man without a name; besides, there was nothing to say, though a great deal to think about. The Berenice was due in four days. Four days during which a man without a name would have to avoid the custom which decreed that such a man must be killed. ”

“ Don began to set down his general view of the way that events would be happening in the outside world, trying to anticipate every possible question. He assumed, to begin with, that the questions would not be too obscure; but that left a large area of possibilities, anyway.
Each day he wrote for several hours, and read for several more. Sometimes he would get too interested in some line of reading that would take him into areas which, he felt, would not be likely to enter the questions. ”

“ Garrity curled his long lip. "It'll cost you just as much in the end. Women are always looking for something."
"Not this kind on Seranis," Gloster said. "Best port I've ever been in. I'm staying on the Aloha till I get to putting curtains on my cabin port."
Garrity shook his head. He looked as cynical as he could, for his age, which was twenty-four. We were all of us fresh out of Lunar, with the ink hardly dry on our Engineer tickets.
"I'll tell you," said Garrity. "I haven't seen a woman yet that wouldn't cost you more than she was worth in the long run." ”

“ Oh, now, really ... you're talking just like Duncan. That was always his apology for them. He said our own ancestors were pretty bad, too. Certainly they were, but I can't see any ancestor of mine acting the way a Tarchik does with a captured enemy. And they haven't the slightest sense of sportsmanship, either. They'd rather jump you from ambush than fight in the open, and they won't fight at all if the enemy's stronger than they are. That's why they've never made any serious attempt to do in all the Earthmen on their world. That, and greed; they get very good deals from us, and they know it. ”

“ The man called Jack shrugged. "Sure, sure. Everybody always talks about the good old days. But I don't see many of 'em going to live in the woods. Like Grace—she says she doesn't like the autokitchen, but she uses it." ”

“ Corrigan corrected.
"All right, probability. Why does he stay here? Why would a really intelligent man give up civilization?"
"Well, you know how it is. He's gone native, you might say. Life among the lotus eaters, and all that. Might happen to anybody, even yourself."
Lenner shuddered.
"It's all right, though." Corrigan continued. "He'll be here any minute, and I'm sure he'll be able to help. Knows all there is to know about these machines. In fact, here he comes now."
Burwell entered, and Corrigan could hardly suppress a small chuckle. ”

“ Grady asked. He was watching the tall, yellow-pale shapes of natives loading bales into the Berenice's cargo slings.
"Nothing much," Jansen said. "Sane as any primitives. All kinds of complicated rules and taboos, and naturally they'll get as mad as hell at you if you scratch a single rule. Most of the data on that is in the agent's notebooks. You add anything to the record that seems to be worth putting down, the way the rest of us have."
"And if they get mad at you, they stop packing plants," the Berenice's mate put in. ”

“ Garrity didn't get caught that way. He got caught because he couldn't keep from telling the rest of us about his great idea. One of the navigators, a man named Lane, was the one who told Katha about it.
Lane was in love with Katha, naturally. Everybody was. She worked in the port medical office and she was one of the reasons why it took a high-seniority card to sign on a ship for Serco. There were a lot of men who'd take an extra set of immune shots just to have Katha give it to them. And it isn't a bit easy to figure out why. ”

“ In fact, the only thing that made it slightly difficult to be courteous to V'gu was his air of superiority. He paid for services and sample objects and information by trading strange gadgets which could do fabulous things, and which were immediately patentable by the lucky owners, but he passed out the priceless gadgets with the air of a civilized man handing out glass beads and useless gimcracks to savages. ”

“ Larry Lonigan said, his smile glittering under the bright lights of the studio. "And Win-a-Mint always keeps its promises, don't we? So, folks, tonight we're putting up the biggest mint offered yet on this program ... one hundred thousand dollars!"
The applause was deafening.
"Now, then, here's the young man you all remember, the boy who hit the top money on our little group quiz last week, and earned the right to Win-a-Mint! Here he is, Mr. Don Gerson! Come on out, Don!" ”

“ But the funniest thing of all, to them, was his idea about the kids. Naturally, a Tarchik pup's no use to its father till it's a bit grown. Then, if it's a boy, the old man teaches it to drink smassi and file its teeth, and go out ambushing and cutting tails with the other noble savages. If it's a girl, the father looks around for a suitable buyer as soon as its breasts are grown, and hopes for the best price possible. ”

“ McCann closed his notepad, bored, and gazed at the sky, prepared to suffer through the rest of the speech. His paper could get the words of the speech from the TV. McCann had no comment to add; he had heard such ideas before. To the east in the sky was the distant glare of the landing lights of an oncoming aircraft.... No. Not a plane, a star. A star almost fantastically brilliant, brighter than the others, brighter than Mars.
"Mr. V'gu!" a young reporter said excitedly. "Isn't that a nova, there?" He pointed and everyone looked.
V'gu turned, his hand on the gangway rail. ”

“ It had everything else a good faculty club should have: brown leather armchairs, old magazines, fresh newspapers, a dusty chess board, cut glass decanters ... it was a place well suited for comfortable reading, talking and drinking—except for the quality of the whiskey. ”

“ Shallra said, and there is nothing harder for a Kya to say. But she added something even harder for a Kya woman to say; his name, his proper name, which she had always known but could never use. Then she walked away, and out of Grady's life, because he was now a man without a name. ”

“ The Village is full of them. However—" He rose, and stalked toward the set, his eyes glittering in a peculiar way. "You're a lucky one, Daddyo. Back in my square days, I did some reading up on the hookups between poetry and magic. Now, I'm a poet. Therefore, and to wit, I'm also a magician. On this hangup, I'm going to try magic. Electronics won't work, that's for sure."
"But...." Mr. Rapp was not quite sure why he disapproved, but he did. On the other hand, the repairman appeared to be very definitely sure of what he was doing, as he peered into the back of the television set. ”

“ My name's Philip Corrigan, and I'd be very glad to help you on your way ... but I think it might be a little difficult. We aren't really a very mechanically-minded people here."
Lenner ran his hands through his hair. "I've got to get back. Isn't there anybody who knows something about time machines?"
Corrigan had been thinking swiftly. He had also been carrying on a conversation which Lenner could not possibly hear, with a man who was several miles away.
"Burwell, he wants to go home."
"Fine. He ought to. Why doesn't he?"
"He lost his confidence. He thinks his machine's broken down." ”